- France: Presidential contender Édouard Philippe targeted by embezzlement probe
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“French investigators are probing allegations of embezzlement involving high-profile presidential candidate Édouard Philippe over the allocation of a digital hub contract in the northern port city of Le Havre where he is mayor, prosecutors have said. The 55-year-old centrist, an ex-prime minister seen as one of the strongest contenders in next year’s election to replace President Emmanuel Macron, denies the accusations. Polls suggest that Philippe, a centrist with his Horizons party, could successfully take on the far right and win the vote. His team said that he took note of the probe and would ‘answer the questions put to him by the judiciary as he has always done in a very serene manner.'” (05/20/26)
- Kennedy fires heads of regime task force that sets insurance coverage rules
Source: Axios
“Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the co-chairs of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force last week. The move could open the task force up to more political influence. It comes as the administration prepares to vet new applicants to the committee, a process in which the chairs would typically be involved. The expert panel recommends which health services insurers must cover at no cost to patients under the Affordable Care Act. Kennedy sent letters dated May 11 to John Wong, a professor and primary care clinician at Tufts University, and Esa Davis, a professor and primary care clinician at University of Maryland, stating that their appointments as chairs would conclude effective immediately. Wong’s term was slated to last until mid-March 2027, and Davis’s term until mid-March 2028.” (05/20/26)
- Barney Frank, 1940-2026
Source: CBS News
“Barney Frank, an outspoken Democrat who represented Massachusetts in Congress for 32 years, has died, the Associated Press reported, citing his former campaign manager and close friend. He was 86 years old. … he sought re-election in 1988 after publicly acknowledging his homosexuality, a rarity back then. His constituents affirmed their support in 1990 after a scandal involving his association with a male prostitute, which a House Ethics Committee investigation found included Frank fixing parking tickets and making misleading statements to prosecutors in criminal cases involving the prostitute. … Frank served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011 and he co-sponsored the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the financial reform law passed following the 2008 housing crash. He decided not to seek reelection in 2012, citing signficiant redistricting.” (05/20/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/barney-frank-dies-obituary-massachusetts-congressman/
- Two humpback whales set records swimming between Australia and Brazil
Source: SFGate
“Scientists have spotted two humpback whales that made separate, record-breaking crossings between Australia and Brazil. The whales were identified by their distinctive tail markings at the two locations about 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers) apart. They traveled in opposite directions and journeyed farther than any humpback known so far. ‘It’s a very rare event, but it is a really wonderful demonstration of just how wide-ranging these animals are,’ said Phillip Clapham, former head of a NOAA whale research program who was not involved with the new findings. Humpback whales are known for roaming long distances across major oceans in predictable patterns, typically following migration routes learned from their mothers.” (05/20/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/two-humpback-whales-set-records-swimming-between-22267439.php
- Bolivia: Capital under siege as protests and blockades deepen crisis for president
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Bolivia’s President Rodrigo Paz faces a deepening crisis as widespread protests and blockades leave the political capital under siege less than six months after he took office. Two weeks of road closures – spearheaded by the Bolivian Workers’ Central, COB, peasant unions and miners – have emptied markets in La Paz and depleted vital hospital oxygen reserves. The government reported that at least three people died after emergency vehicles were blocked from reaching medical centres. On Monday, supporters of Bolivia’s influential ex-president Evo Morales clashed with police in the capital city as they joined multiple sectors demanding the resignation of the president, who lacks both a legislative majority and a robust political party to anchor his administration.” (05/20/26)
- South Korea: Samsung’s union puts off strike after reaching last-minute wage deal with management
Source: SFGate
“Samsung Electronics’ labor union said Wednesday it’ll hold off on launching a planned strike and put a tentative wage deal with management to a vote, alleviating immediate concerns about the operation of the world’s largest memory chip maker. The announcement was made after a last-minute government-mediated negotiation with management over how much bonus payouts must be provided to employees to reflect soaring profits fueled by the global boom in artificial intelligence. Union leader Choi Seung-ho told a televised briefing that the union agreed not to go ahead with an 18-day strike that he earlier said would start from Thursday. He said union members will vote on the tentative agreement from May 22-27.” (05/20/26)
- Randstad CEO: College career path “over” as skilled trade get 30% pay bump
Source: CNBC
“The days of going to college to secure a lucrative career are over, as skilled trade workers have seen a 30% wage bump in the past few years, the CEO of the world’s largest recruitment firm told CNBC. Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of Dutch staffing giant Randstad, recommended the skilled trades career track to young people in an interview on CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box Europe’ on Wednesday. … Specialized skilled trade roles are now offering salaries that compete with traditional office jobs, with wage growth up 30% in the U.S. in the past four years, up 21% in the Netherlands, 18% in Germany, and 9% in the U.K, according to Randstad’s latest data shared with CNBC.” (05/20/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/ai-skills-randstad-college-trades-jobs-pay-bump.html
- Why Libertarianism Keeps Splintering
Source: The Daily Economy
by Matt Zwolinski“The term ‘libertarian’ first emerged in the 1850s as a self-description for a French anarcho-communist who thought private property and the state were two sides of the same coin. By 1913, Charles Sprading was using it to describe a tent that included Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Single-Taxers, Anarchists, and Women’s Rights advocates. By the mid-twentieth century, under the influence of Leonard Read and the Foundation for Economic Education, it had narrowed to mean support for free markets and limited government. By the 1970s, the Nozick-Rand-Rothbard synthesis had narrowed it further still — to a particular form of rationalist, rights-based, free-market absolutism. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the label fragmented again. Bleeding-heart libertarians, left-libertarians, paleolibertarians, neoreactionaries — all under the same tent, none in agreement about what the tent contains. The current crackup isn’t an aberration. It’s what libertarianism has always done.” (05/20/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/why-libertarianism-keeps-splintering/
- Why Thomas Massie Thought He Was Different
Source: The Atlantic
by Russell Berman“For a long time, Representative Thomas Massie confidently defied an ironclad law of modern Republican politics — that to oppose President Trump was to start a ticking clock on your electoral career. ‘I’m not worried about losing,’ he told me last spring inside the Capitol, as he explained to a group of reporters the strength of his support within his Kentucky district. … last night Massie met the same fate as so many of Trump’s Republican critics: He lost his primary. … For months leading up to the primary, Massie had held up his race as an important test case for the Trump era: If he could criticize the president and win anyway, his victory would embolden other Republicans to speak out and vote against Trump when they felt compelled to, loosening his viselike grip on the party.” (05/20/26)
- Data Centers Use Less Water Than Almond Farms — and Do More Good
Source: Reason
by Robby Soave“Data center panic is fueled by concerns about electricity and water usage. Many Americans wrongly believe that data centers are driving up their electric bill, even though evidence suggests the exact opposite: Data centers may actually decrease electricity costs for their neighbors. Water use fears are even more unreasonable. Data centers don’t actually use all that much water. … California’s almond farms consume 4.2 billion gallons of waters per day, according to Reason‘s Christian Britschgi. Data centers consume just 46 million gallons per day. Those numbers will certainly rise over time, but compared to all the other things that use water — golf courses account for 1.4 billion gallons per day — it’s just a drop in the bucket.” (05/20/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/20/data-centers-use-less-water-than-almond-farms-and-do-more-good/
- Federal Courts, Local Wrongs: Growing Federal Power Means Less Accountability
Source: Liberalism.org
by Radley Balko“Qualified immunity, which we discussed in part one, is typically an issue only with state and local police. But that’s only because the protections afforded to federal police make them nearly untouchable. Those federal protections are getting more attention as state and federal police increasingly work together on issues like drug enforcement, gangs, and immigration. It used to be that federal agents were few, making their immunities less important. But as federal law enforcement has grown, the importance of these exceptional protections has grown along with it.” (05/20/26)
- Beware The Blob — its mission is creepy
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal“The idea of ‘the general welfare’ was a cancer. It has metastasized to include anything the control freaks in government want power over. And, they want to be involved in absolutely everything; those few things they aren’t yet meddling with, they’ll point to and call ‘freedom.’ Until they also take that away. … As for those antiquated justifications for government? Now, government sends its military around the world, creating enemies out of thin air, ultimately threatening the safety of all Americans. They ignored Thomas Jefferson’s advice of trade with all nations; entangling alliances with none, and we’re paying the price. Here at home, you’re now more likely to have your life, liberty, or property violated by a government employee enforcing a rule or ‘law’ than by a freelance criminal.” (05/20/26)
- Will Spencer Pratt Realign California?
Source: American Greatness
by Edward Ring“By every reasonable standard of governance, California’s elected politicians have made a mess of the Golden State. Reciting the litany of failures has become so common that it’s hardly worth the trouble. Chaotic, unsafe downtowns. Retail businesses giving up and relocating. Chronic government budget deficits, despite the nation’s highest taxes, set to go higher still. ‘Needle exchanges’ and ‘safe injection sites,’ funded by taxpayers. Kids encounter drug zombies on the way to school. Parents dodge psychopaths in grocery store parking lots. We’ve heard it all. We’ve seen it all. We’re desensitized. We just avoid certain parts of town the best we can and tell ourselves it can’t be helped. When we choose which candidates to support, we know nothing is going to change.” (05/20/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/20/will-spencer-pratt-realign-california/
- The new era of asymmetric war exposes the limits of conventional warfare
Source: The Hill
by Tom Mockaitis“What do the conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Lebanon have in common? They each demonstrate how technology permits a weak state or even a non-state actor to hold a powerful adversary at bay. They are asymmetric wars, conflicts in which one side fights for its survival while the other has a limited objective. ‘Asymmetric warfare’ is a new term for an old phenomenon. The U.S. gained its independence in an asymmetric war. The small Continental Army and state militias never faced the might of the British Empire …. The U.S. faced a similar dilemma in Vietnam. … The lessons of history did not stop Russia from getting bogged down in Ukraine, the U.S. from attacking Iran or Israel from invading Lebanon. Now, however, technology has enhanced the ability of the weaker adversary to counter the stronger.” (05/20/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5883470-asymmetric-warfare-modern-conflicts/
- Venti-Sized Subsidy
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jason Edmonds“Tennessee taxpayers are about to spend millions on a Starbucks order they didn’t ask for. In April, the world’s largest coffee chain announced it would be opening a Southeast corporate office in Music City. The state has done well in attracting businesses, both large and small, through a low-tax, business-friendly environment. Yet those bigger businesses sometimes get a free upgrade, courtesy of state taxpayers, and the Starbucks move is brewing up to be a burn for Tennesseans. Despite the coffee chain’s public and vocal decision to open an office in Tennessee, state leaders act as if Starbucks needs more convincing or as if its profits aren’t ‘grande’ enough to cover office space.” (05/20/26)
- American Democracy Does Not Exist
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“Thomas Massie has lost his congressional seat against a primary opponent whose Israel lobby funding made the race the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history. Massie has been a rare Republican opponent of Israeli abuses on Capitol Hill. The spending on Massie’s ouster topped out at a staggering $32 million when all was said and done. The second- and third-most expensive House primary races were also heavily slanted by Israel lobby funding, with AIPAC pouring millions into toppling progressive Democrats Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. Americans just watched the Israel lobby openly manipulate yet another election, and then in like two weeks they’re going to hear their government tell them they need to regime change another foreign country to bring ‘democracy’ to its people. Americans themselves do not have democracy.” (05/20/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/05/20/american-democracy-does-not-exist/
- The Department of Education Is Alive and Well
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance“The Department of Education (ED) is moving out of its headquarters at the Lyndon B. Johnson Building in Washington, D.C., this summer. The Department of Energy (DOE) will be the new tenant. Turns out that because of personnel cuts at the Department of Education, the building is roughly 70 percent vacant. … But in spite of Trump’s executive order and the elimination of half of its workforce, the Department of Education is alive and well.” (05/20/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-department-of-education-is-alive-and-well/
- The Supreme Court Has Enabled Trump to Become Profiteer-in-Chief
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman“On Monday, Donald Trump dropped his sham lawsuit against the federal government. In exchange, the Justice Department under his control will establish a $1.8 billion fund for ‘victims of lawfare,’ as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it. This will be a slush fund for Trump’s allies, presumably January 6 insurrectionists and others already rewarded with a pardon. There is a zone of lawlessness around the Oval Office, erected by the Supreme Court when it granted current and former presidents effective immunity from prosecution if their crimes involved ‘official acts.’ Loot the taxpayers, misuse government power for graft, and you’re off the hook. Last week, the president filed a report with the Office of Government Ethics detailing the stock trades he made this year. It is a novelistic tale of profiteering, recognizable as insider trading in every way except, perhaps, under the law.” (05/20/26)
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/epic-corruption-plain-sight
- When goods cross borders, sometimes armies do too
Source: Sex and the State
by Cathy Reisenwitz“[T]he last 20-ish years have revealed to everyone (who paid attention and isn’t severely brain-damaged) that global trade does not, in fact, prevent armed conflict or interstate violence on its own. Now, it is a disincentive. It’s also helpful for a bunch of other reasons. But it alone clearly cannot keep leaders from starting wars. As far as I know, no one thing can universally and permanently stop wars. The best we can hope for is doing a bunch of smart things at the same time and hoping it all nets out to reducing the frequency and severity of armed conflicts.” (05/20/26)
https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/when-goods-cross-borders-sometimes
- Occupation & Genocide Anywhere Are Threat to Democracy & Freedom Everywhere
Source: Common Dreams
by Koketso Moeti“Earlier this year a number of participants announced their withdrawal from Australia’s Adelaide Festival’s ‘Writer’s Week’ following the disinviting of Australian-Palestinian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah. The event was subsequently cancelled. This made me think of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese’s words, delivered in her Nelson Mandela Lecture: ‘The occupation of Palestine must be understood as part of a broader project of domination. This is not merely about the physical borders of historical Palestine. It is a systematic assertion of permanent supremacy that knows no border …’ Indeed, the impact of the ongoing genocide and occupation not only echo far beyond Palestine, because of our shared humanity, but also because of the impact it is having on freedoms across the globe. The censorship of Abdel-Fattah is yet another example of this, and it is not only happening in Australia.” (05/20/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/occupation-and-genocide-threat
- The News-to-Death Ratio Strikes Again
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Carl Heneghan & Tom Jefferson“There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a ‘news-to-death ratio’ of 8,176-to-1. In other words, for every death attributed to swine flu, there were over eight thousand news stories. Tuberculosis, by contrast, received less than 0.1 news stories per death over the same period. If that sounds absurd, it is, and yet very little has changed. Take the current hantavirus scare. A cruise ship, the MV Hondius, sits off Cape Verde. There are 7 cases in total (2 confirmed, 5 suspected) and 3 deaths …. In the past week alone, there have been at least 10 to 15 unique news stories, generating hundreds of articles.” (05/20/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-news-to-death-ratio-strikes-again/
- How Federal Transfers Undermine Freedom
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by Thomas Savidge“This explainer examines the relationship between federal, state, and local governments shaped by transfers and the incentives they create.” (05/20/26)
https://aier.org/article/how-federal-transfers-undermine-freedom/
- We shut out independent voters at our own political risk
Source: USA Today
by Chris Brennan“There’s a growing trend of American voters breaking up with American political parties. A Gallup survey in January found that 45% of Americans identify as political independents. And now their voter registrations are starting to reflect that. But in Pennsylvania, voters must be registered as a Democrat or a Republican to cast ballots in a closed-party primary. That means that only registered Democrats in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District were the only Philadelphians who got to vote on May 19 for a new representative in the House.” [editor’s note: What? Only members of a particular party get to choose that party’s candidates? The horror! This guy wants “open primaries.” How about NO primaries, the parties choose their candidates, all parties and candidates get equal, open ballot access (by eliminating government control of ballot printing), “problem” solved – TLK] (05/20/26)
- Family Resemblance
Source: The Bleeding Heart Libertarian
by Matt Zwolinski“Is Peter Thiel a Real Libertarian?” (05/20/26)
https://bleedingheartlibertarian.substack.com/p/family-resemblance
- What Happens Next?
Source: Lisa Liberty
by Lisa Liberty“For years, automation has primarily threatened physical labor. Factory workers worried about robots. Cashiers worried about self-checkout kiosks. But something has certainly changed with artificial intelligence. For the first time in modern history, the jobs most vulnerable to replacement are not manual labor jobs, but cognitive ones. The people at greatest risk are not welders or electricians, but office workers, analysts, coders, marketers, accountants, journalists, support staff, designers, and countless others whose jobs exist primarily on a screen. … While technology has always disrupted labor markets, this transition feels different because of its scale and speed. Previous industrial revolutions still required massive amounts of human labor to operate the new systems being created. AI, by contrast, will increasingly remove the need for human labor altogether in many sectors. That leaves us with some hard questions society still seems reluctant to seriously confront: What happens next?” (05/20/26)
- The Wonderful, Loving Left
Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis“They try so hard to convince people how ‘wonderful’ and ‘loving’ they are. And, frankly, countless millions fall for it. You see, folks, it’s ‘loving’ to let a mother murder her unborn child. Or to let a child be mutilated for life. Or to keep people enslaved under government welfare with little hope of ever getting out of it. It’s a wonderful thing to let people sleep on the streets, or to turn criminals loose so they can prey on innocent citizens, or to open the borders of America so that countless people can illegally come to America, live off the hard-earned money of American taxpayers, or take American jobs, or kill and rape American citizens. These are all ‘wonderful,’ ‘loving’ things, aren’t they..” (05/20/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/05/20/the-wonderful-loving-left-n2676348
- Senators Propose To Head Off “Automatic” Draft Registration by Repealing Selective Service
Source: Antiwar.com
by Edward Hasbrouck“The garbage-in, garbage-out process of automated and involuntary registration won’t produce a list that’s complete, accurate, or fit for the purpose of reliably and provably delivering induction orders. But it will allow war planners to continue to pretend that a draft is available as a fallback, so they don’t have to consider whether enough Americans will fight the wars they are planning, even if they prove bloodier than expected. And it will produce a list that’s vulnerable to misuse and weaponization. … The attempt at ‘automatic’ draft registration will inevitably be a fiasco. The only way to head it off is to end draft registration entirely. That won’t happen unless Congress feels public pressure — soon.” (05/20/26)
- Warsh Inherits a Fed Caught Between Inflation and Trump
Source: The Daily Economy
by Lydia Mashburn Newman“Kevin Warsh enters the Fed chairmanship facing sticky inflation, rising energy costs, and strong consumer demand. Prompt action may help avoid politically explosive rate hikes.” (05/20/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/warsh-inherits-a-fed-caught-between-inflation-and-trump/
- A Rothbardian Case Against Bad Data Center Policy
Source: Law & Liberty
by Connor O’Keeffe“A lot has already been written about the flaws and fallacies leading many to believe AI will trigger an employment apocalypse that will make everyone but a small sliver of the country much poorer. There are also reasons to actually expect positive political developments as AI begins to automate the exact kind of administrative, clerical, and bureaucratic work that has defined the so-called managerial class and made their positions necessary. And the environmental threat posed by data centers is often overblown by exaggerated projections based on earlier, less efficient forms of the technology that are now obsolete. Where the opposition to data centers does have some merit, however, is on the NIMBY front.” (05/20/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbardian-case-against-bad-data-center-policy
- Make It Make Sense, 05/20/26
Source: Washington Post
“What Thomas Massie’s loss means for MAGA.” (05/20/26)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/make-it-make-sense/what-thomas-massies-loss-means-for-maga/
- Hard Lens Media, 05/20/26
Source: Hard Lens Media
“TRUMP VS THOMAS MASSIE: Massive Primary Defeat Signals the Dawn of a New GOP Era.” (05/20/26)
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 05/20/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Did Massie Lose … Or Was He Pushed?” (05/20/26)
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/did-massie-loseor-was-he-pushed
- The Political Orphanage, 05/20/26
Source: The Political Orphanage
“The Great Baby Shortage.” (05/20/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/the-great-baby-shortage
- The Fifth Column, episode 558
Source: The Fifth Column
“The Youngest Guy in the Worst Room in America w/ Rep. Maxwell Frost.” (05/20/26)
https://www.wethefifth.com/p/the-youngest-guy-in-the-worst-room
- Capital Record, episode 300
Source: National Review
“300 Episodes to Defend a Free & Virtuous Society.” (05/19/26)
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 05/20/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump Screws Himself So Badly on Texas Race, GOPers Visibly Stunned.” (05/20/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/210706/trump-screws-badly-tex-race-gopers-visibly-stunned